At length, in the spring of 1616, Raleigh was released, though still
unpardoned. He and his devoted wife immediately put all that remained of
their fortune into a new venture. Twenty years before this he thought he
could make 'Discovery of the mighty, rich, and beautiful Empire of
Guiana, and of that great and golden city, which the Spaniards call El
Dorado, and the natives call Manoa.' Now he would go back to find the El
Dorado of his dreams, somewhere inland, that mysterious Manoa among
those southern Mountains of Bright Stones which lay behind the Spanish
Main. The king's cupidity was roused; and so, in 1617, Raleigh was
commissioned as the admiral of fourteen sail. In November he arrived off
the coast that guarded all the fabled wealth still lying undiscovered in
the far recesses of the Orinocan wilds. _Guiana, Manoa, El Dorado_--the
inland voices called him on.

But Spaniards barred the way; and Raleigh, defying the instructions of
the King, attacked them. The English force was far too weak and disaster
followed. Raleigh's son and heir was killed and his lieutenant committed
suicide. His men began to mutiny. Spanish troops and ships came closing
in; and the forlorn remnant of the expedition on which such hopes were
built went straggling home to England. There Raleigh was arrested and
sent to the block on the 29th of October, 1618. He had played the great
game of life-and-death and lost it. When he mounted the scaffold, he
asked to see the axe. Feeling the edge, he smiled and said: 'Tis a sharp
medicine, but a cure for all diseases.' Then he bared his neck and died
like one who had served the Great Queen as her Captain of the Guard.

CHAPTER XII

DRAKE'S END

Drake in disfavor after 1589 seems a contradiction that nothing can
explain. It can, however, be quite easily explained, though never
explained away. He had simply failed to make the Lisbon Expedition
pay--a heinous offence in days when the navy was as much a revenue
department as the customs or excise. He had also failed to take Lisbon
itself. The reasons why mattered nothing either to the disappointed
government or to the general public.

But, six years later, in 1595, when Drake was fifty and Hawkins
sixty-three, England called on them both to strike another blow at
Spain. Elizabeth was helping Henry IV of France against the League of
French and Spanish Catholics. Henry, astute as he was gallant, had found
Paris 'worth a mass' and, to Elizabet